Ski holiday specialist since 2004.

Where is the snow? Alps snow report overview for Week 7 2016

The ski season is in full swing in the Alps. Last couple of weeks were a mix of snowfalls and sunny days. What else would you like for a ski holiday? Let’s have a look at Austrian and Italian ski resorts to check how they’re doing.

Austria

All Austrian ski resorts have excellent skiing conditions at the moment. Fifteen destinations offer more than 100 kilometers of groomed pistes to ski on.

Clouds full of snow above SkiWelt

Although not 100% open, the SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser ski resort has the most runs open for skiers. 255 out of 284 km of trails are available and this includes valley runs throughout the resort.

SkiWelt’s immediate neighbour: Kitzbuhel is 100% open with 174 km of pistes open. All funparsk and halfpipe are open for boaders. Here, too, you may take advantage of open valley runs at the end of your skiing day.

All slopes in the Schladming Dachstein area are open today

Among other large Austrian ski destinations offering 100% of their slopes for skiing are: Schladming, Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis, Obertauern, Hochkoenig and the great Salzburger Sportwelt ski resort.

If you’re after a smaller resort Rauris, Kals-Matrei, Lofer and Heiligenblut are our favourites among those, which are 100% open but offer fewer runs.

Here’s Rauris under snow

All other Austrian areas are minimum 70% open. For instance the new huge Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn ski resort that binds Salbrugerland and Tiro has 210 out of 270 km of runs open. Although it is only 78%, hard to say about lack of choice.

Italy

Investments into modern snowmaking facilities have been at the centre of Italian ski resorts’ development strategy for years now. In result, they were able to open lots and lots of runs despite very small snowfalls in December and January.

Only to ski resorts offering 100+ km of runs are not fully open. These are Bardonecchia with 60 out of 100 km of slopes open and the upmarket Cortina d’Ampezzo in Trentino where you can ski on 100 out of 120 km pistes.

Not much to be seen from the top of Bormio. Snow on the way.

The largest ski resorts get most of headlines but Italy has plenty beautiful smaller places to ski in. Pila, Aprica, Folgaria, Solda, Civetta, San Martino di Castrozza and Bormio ski resort all offer between 45 and 80 km of runs open today.

On balance, February is a perfect time to go skiing in the Alps. You get excellent conditions nearly everywhere you try and it is hard to find a close ski resort these days. It looks like the season is going to be very long this year.